Marking time on history
Renaming the Great War
This is a fitting day to mention some clever projects that Tim Sherrat has done to extract and process information from a mass of digital data. He describes in his blog how he worked with the Trove archive of Australian newspapers to see when people stopped talking about the Great War and started talking about the First World War. He discussed a wider range of work concerning the Great War in a keynote address.
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A postcard from North Reef
My favourite Queensland lighthouse is the one at North Reef, about 120 km north east of Gladstone. The lighthouse was built in 1878 on a small patch of sand on a coral reef, supported on a concrete-filled iron caisson founded on the coral. It is the tallest example of its type, and the most remarkable. Because the lighthouse is remote from the mainland, and is difficult to approach by boat, few visitors went there and old photographs are very rare.
I went to the North Reef lighthouse in 2006 for my nationwide survey project. I flew in and out with an Australian Maritime Systems maintenance crew by helicopter — an exciting and efficient way to get a great view of the tower and the reef.
»more»The real face of White Australia
I’m a fan and follower of Tim Sherrat through his discontents blog. Today I read about his Invisible Australians project. The website explains:
The White Australia Policy was about people - people whose lives were monitored and restricted because of the colour of their skin. This experimental browser enables you to explore the records of the White Australia Policy through the faces of those people.»more»
These portraits were extracted from a range of government documents using a face detection script. We’ve tried to weed out the mistakes, but you may still notice a few oddities. Many portraits are duplicated, as multiple copies of the forms were often kept.
Cairns Railway Red Cross Guild
My grandfather John Victor Marquis-Kyle (1897-1981) was a firm believer in doing volunteer work for the common good. He put this belief into action in various ways including, during the Second World War, working at weekends and evenings with a small group of men in a workshop under his house, making crutches for the Red Cross. I can remember him talking about this, and it sounded like he enjoyed both the companionship of working together and the feeling of ‘doing something useful’. Making a pair of crutches for an injured soldier was a very personal and practical help.
»more»Chelsea Physic Garden
Roger Dean, London photographer and partner of Penny, an old friend of my sister’s, compiled a list of places we should see while in London in September 2010. Chelsea Physic Garden was on the list, and Roger and Penny took us there for lavish cakes, tea, and a wander around.
»more»Steam Ship Denmark
Millions of carte-de-visite photographs were produced in the second half of the nineteenth century. Almost all of them were studio portraits, but there were also a few topographic subjects like buildings and landscapes. Even rarer were cartes produced as commercial advertisements, and here is an example.
»more»After the flood
When I was a child in primary school an old man gave me a stack of photographs — a couple of dozen whole-plate contact prints with scenes of the 1893 Brisbane River flood and its aftermath. At the time, I thought those pictures were wonderful, and I still do. They started my interest in thehistory of photography, and they were the beginning of my own little collection.
»more»Town gas
Gentle reader, if you know where this photograph was taken, please post a comment or a message. The picture shows a small town gasworks, newly built or under construction. In front of the camera is the gas holder with five blokes sitting or standing on the empty vessel. Behind on the left is a shed (for storing feed stock?) and in the centre a brick building (the retort house?). No chimneys are visible (odd?). The style of the photographic print suggests a date in the 1870s, ’80s or ’90s. The name of the photographer suggests the place shown may be one of the 61 former gasworks sites in New South Wales. Any ideas?
»more»Climbing Brunelleschi’s cupola
In Florence, at the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, tourists are welcome to climb to the top of the dome. The other day we joined the horde queueing in the piazza outside, bought tickets and threaded our way through a turnstile and along passages and up stairs. Many, many stairs. Stone stairs spiralling up inside the walls until I was giddy. Stone stairs stepping up the curve of the inner dome. Stone passages low and narrow, patinated with the sweat of visitors accummulated since the completion of the dome in 1436, and decorated with mundane graffiti.
»more»New year’s resolution for 2010
I have resolved to compile a checklist of lighthouses I would like to visit some time. I have already said I want to visit Muckle Flugga. Next on the list is in Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India. The postcard below shows an amazing architectural mashup of lighthouse and courthouse. The building, described as an exquisite example of Indo-Saracenic style of architecture, incorporates the lighthouse lantern room and optical apparatus in the top of its highest dome. Flickr user NavneethC took a nice telephoto shot that shows the Chance Brothers lantern grafted into the Indo-Saracenic dome.
»more»Goondiwindi wheelwright
On 24 August 1942 R A Cook, wheelwright and blacksmith of Goondiwindi, wrote a note on his printed invoice paper. I can’t be sure of the name of the recipient, but the note went like this:
Dear Sir»more»
Just a line to ask you if you can supply me with some river oak billets for bullock yokes. They want to be 4ft 11 long by 6 × 6. If you can, let me know what price for same. I require (15) Fifteen and I want them quick.
David Malouf at West End Library
My local public library opened in 1929, and today we marked it’s 80th birthday with a talk by David Malouf, and a birthday cake.
»more»Geohistoriography
Artist Tim Schwartz illustrates on his website his installation piece Geohistoriography.
This show captures how America views the world as seen through the lens of the American media. All data was collected from the New York Times, namely the number of articles written about a certain country for each year.»more»
The two wall drawings are representations of the 2008 state of America’s view of the world. In one piece countries were morphed and expanded or contracted if they were written about more or less than average. In the pyramid piece, countries were organized in a ranked fashion depending on this same data.
The animation shows how America’s perspective changed over the last 150 years.
Geohistoriography
Artist Tim Schwartz illustrates on his website his installation piece Geohistoriography.
This show captures how America views the world as seen through the lens of the American media. All data was collected from the New York Times, namely the number of articles written about a certain country for each year.»more»
The two wall drawings are representations of the 2008 state of America’s view of the world. In one piece countries were morphed and expanded or contracted if they were written about more or less than average. In the pyramid piece, countries were organized in a ranked fashion depending on this same data.
The animation shows how America’s perspective changed over the last 150 years.
Panoramic Queensland
The other day I went to the State Library of Queensland to see Panoramic Queensland, an exhibition of panoramic photographs from the John Oxley Library collection. This is a fine showing of several dozen panoramas of Brisbane and other Queensland places.
»more»Lighthouse life in Queensland
It was my pleasure today to talk to members of the Queensland Women’s Historical Association on the subject of lighthouse life in Queensland. The association hosts morning talks each month at Miegunyah, its house museum at Bowen Hills. Before the talk we gathered on the verandah for introductions and chat. There were white table cloths, tea in china cups, and platters of dainty sandwiches. It was a warmish day, and kind ladies handed out fans to the members as they filed into the dining room for the talk.
My audience really enjoyed seeing a series of photographs of the Byrne family, taken at Sandy Cape Lightstation between 1903 and 1913. The photos are now in the John Oxley Library collection, and published on the web. The Byrne family story is also told as one chapter in the library’s virtual exhibition Travelling for love.
»more»Merry and happy, again
As a sequel to a previous greeting card here is another nineteenth century photographic greeting card from Tasmania. This one is not an ordinary carte-de-visite, but a somewhat larger card measuring 125mm by 82mm. The Loebenstein Company of Vienna produced more than two dozen sizes of cards for mounting photographs. This size was known by the charming name of Elisabeth.
»more»Timber and iron in the smart colony
Yesterday I gave a talk at the Queensland Museum, part of a series called Queensland Connections. In this series, speakers about cultural heritage subjects are teamed with Queensland Museum staffers who talk about natural environment subjects. The result is short talks and odd double-bills.
»more»Where is this?
I’m intrigued to know the identity of the Queensland bush township in this old lantern slide.
»more»Who was the motorist?
Could the car in this photo have belonged to the intrepid adventurer Francis Birtles?
»more»Lighthouse welcome
Just found in the National Library picture collection: a stereo photo of a welcome arch built in Hobart for the 1901 visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. This little object tickles my interest in stereo views, lighthouses, and celebratory arches.
»more»circusmuseum.nl
Enjoy the fabulous collection of historic circus ephemera at circusmuseum.nl. There are thousands of colour lithographic posters from the Hamburg printing firm of Adolph Friedländer, each one catalogued, digitised, and available on the web. The website nicely explains, in Dutch and in English, the provenance of the collection.
»more»Dili
In June 1972 I took a TAA flight from Darwin to Portugese Timor, as it then was. To me, it was a wonderfully strange and exotic place, a time-warped colonial leftover. A great start to my adventure.
Today, with Australian troops on the way to Timor again, I am thinking about the people I met there, and the hard times they have had.
»more»John Ruskin’s Daguerreotypes?
From an article in the UK Telegraph newspaper yesterday:
A small country firm of auctioneers has been left embarrassed but elated after selling a box of photographs it valued at £80 for £75,000.»more»
How the other half lived
My thanks to Paul Giambarba for a link to an online version of Jacob Riis’s How the other half lives.
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Snakes and spiders
From Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for this day in 1661:
To Westminster Hall, where it was full term. Here all the morning, and at noon to my Lord Crew’s, where one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some that in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and that do feed upon larks, which they take thus: They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouths uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson up to the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. He is a great traveller; and, speaking of the tarantula, he says that all the harvest long (about which times they are most busy) there are fidlers go up and down the fields every where, in expectation of being hired by those that are stung….
Over the top
For Remembrance Day, a reminder that arguments about the authenticity of the photographic record are not new.
Frank Hurley, in France with the Australian troops in 1917, wrote about the problems of recording what was going on around him:
I have tried, and tried again, to include events on a single negative but the results have been hopeless. Everything is on such a wide scale … Figures scattered, atmosphere dense with haze and smoke — shells that simply would not burst when required. All the elements of a picture were there, could they but be brought together and condensed. The battle is in full swing, the men are going over the top — I snap. A fleet of bombing planes is flying low, there is a barrage bursting all round. But on developing my plates there is disappointment. All I find is a record of a few figures advancing from the trenches and a background of haze.»more»
$87,000,000,000.00
It’s hard to imagine what 87 Billion US Dollars is. That’s the amount the US government plans to spend to finish a mission of securing peace and eliminating terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan
»more»Paris photographed and rephotographed
As an aside to my special place for this month, here is a link to images of 494 photographs of Paris by Eugène Atget in the George Eastman House collection.
»more»Denis O’Donovan’s library
In 1874 Denis O’Donovan became Queensland Parliamentary Librarian. He was an unlikely arrival in the colonial frontier town of Brisbane — capital of the state of Queensland, separated from New South Wales 15 years before. O’Donovan was a cultivated man, educated in Ireland and France.
»more»Celebrating federation
When the Duke and Duchess of York visited Australia in 1901, the loyal colonists turned on a special welcome. See this little gallery of stereo photographs. Of the six triumphal arches, my favourite is the one made of butter boxes.
»more»Looted treasures
I enjoy the messages I get from people who don’t know me, responding to things I write on this website — like one today from Suzanne Charlé, mentioning a story she wrote for the New York Times: Tiny treasures leave big void in looted Iraq:
»more»Blogging Australian historiography
My thanks to Dr Cathie Clements for pointing out her post on the Australian Council of Professional Historians Forum (14 January 2003). She starts with an annotated list of blog entries, signposting recent arguments about The Truth of what happened between Aborigines and Europeans.
»more»Signs of discrimination
The US Library of Congress houses the work created in the 1930s by Farm Security Administration photographers — Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and others. On the library website is a collection of photographs of signs enforcing racial discrimination. From the web page intro:
»more»Rewriting Australian history
Gary Sauer-Thompson’s public opinion weblog carries a piece by Dr Cathie Clement — here’s an excerpt:
Australia’s past is under the microscope. Allegations are flying thick and fast as scholars endeavour to defend “orthodox” history against the tabloid version preferred by Keith Windschuttle and his supporters. The term “orthodox”, as it is being used in the press, is misleading because, until the battle over Aboriginal history began, the historiography now targeted by conservative commentators was generally viewed as left-wing rather than orthodox.
Lest we forget
Alec Campbell died on Thursday at the age of 103. He was the last surviving veteran of the First World War Gallipoli campaign.
»more»The Nixon tapes
New Yorker columnist Paul Slansky writes: One of the happiest things about life in America is the certainty that, every year or two, a fresh batch of Nixon tapes will be released to the public. In the past few weeks, students of the thirty-seventh President have been busy working their way through four hundred and twenty-six more hours of very special Presidential conversations, bringing the total to 1,779. Slansky has sieved thirteen quizz questions out of those hours of talk. Can you answer this one?:
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